The Reckoning

Prologue

Brooklyn Heights, New York

November 21, 1873

2:00 a.m.

The man they called The Reb was suspended in an uncharacteristic state of paralysis. He had decided what he must do moments after the verdict came in, and he had not changed his mind. He expected his superiors to grumble and call it excessive, but if he struck while their outrage over what had happened still burned hot, they would stop blaming him and start appreciating his loyalty, the ultimate proof of which he would show them this night.

He had taken the last ferry over from the city hours before, walked the few blocks to the house, and secreted himself in the shadows across the street. It had been raining off and on with furious bouts of stinging sleet, and he was chilled to the core despite his heavy corduroy coat, woolen watch cap, and gauntlet gloves. The street was dark and deserted, the house lights having been extinguished hours before. The timing was perfect. Still, he hesitated.

The events of the past weeks ran through his brain in a maddening loop. It was nearly impossible for him to believe that the Boss’s reign over the city was at an end. How many times had the great man wriggled out of his enemies’ clutches? Even now that the verdict had come back guilty, the wily fox surely had his minions scrambling to keep him out of prison. In fact, Reb would bet a good wad of cash that the slippery fellow still had a trick or two up his sleeve. Whether he did or not, his downfall had given Reb a gift he had stopped hoping for long before: the opportunity to avenge a grievous wrong done to him twenty years before. It would be a lonely victory because the only people who would recognize his triumph were going to die. Nonetheless, it would be sweet.

From somewhere in the distance, a church bell tolled two o’clock, and the sound finally jolted him to his senses. Enough dilly-dallying. If he waited much longer, dawn with its inevitable round of commodity deliveries and early risers would jeopardize his chance at anonymity. It was time to act.

Chapter One

Vassar Female College

Poughkeepsie, New York

4:00 a.m.

Harriet Mitchell would never be able to identify what had wakened her at such an early hour that Friday morning. Was it some intuitive foreboding? In the years to come, she would look back and wonder whether the deepest recesses of her mind were somehow attempting to prepare her for the devastation to come. More likely, the wispy remnants of a dream had drawn her from her slumber when the sky was still an inky black slate outside her bedroom window.

Wide awake, she stretched and allowed her thoughts to focus on the day ahead. Her paramount task was to finish the final copy of her essay for the quarterly Vassar Miscellany, which would come out in January of the following year. As one of ten editors, she seldom offered her own work for publication, rather leaving room for the worthy offerings of her fellow students. Lately, however, she had become disturbed by the decreasing quality of the general submissions received by the editorial staff, as well as by what she had been seeing in the popular journals of the day. Convinced it was important to sound the alarm over what she saw as the nationwide lowering of literary standards, she had begun crystallizing her thoughts and writing them down some weeks before. She now had a finished manuscript that had undergone her personal rigorous critique, and after she had finished copying it, it would be ready to submit at that day’s meeting of the editorial staff. Granted, hers was but one small voice, but the Miscellany’s reputation was being noticed even in New York’s literary circles, and if she could call attention to this subject and initiate a discussion among the nation’s premier literati, perhaps others would join the conversation so that a remedy might be had before it was too late.

Her interest in the matter was more than passing. She had begun composing stories and poems from the moment she could hold her first pen. The daughter of parents who encouraged her to think critically for herself and look beyond the traditional role of females in the current culture, she had discovered several lady writers who not only championed the rights of women and the oppressed but also actually made their living by wielding their pen. Aspiring to the same outcome for herself, she had a particular interest in maintaining the integrity of the written word.

Unable to lie still a moment longer, she threw back the covers and stood, the autumn chill causing an immediate shiver. Gas to the students’ bedroom radiators was muted after the ten o’clock bell every night, and warmth would not be fully restored until the wake-up bell at six o’clock. She felt about for her house slippers and wrapper and fumbled for the small kerosene lamp she kept for nighttime emergencies. She struck a match, lit the lamp, and went out into the study parlor she shared with her two parlor mates.

She set the lamp on the large round black walnut table and sat down in front of the scattered pages she had left there the night before. She had managed to copy about half of the essay before the evening study hour ended. Now she located the correct spot, uncapped her ink bottle, and began to write, so absorbed that she was startled when the six o’clock bell rang. She laid her pen down and flexed her aching back. It was still dark outside, but the room was beginning to warm. Now that the gas was back on, she lit the large burner fixture provided in each parlor and extinguished her smaller lamp. She was about to return to her copying when the door to one of the two adjoining rooms opened and Lucinda Riddleston shuffled in, yawning widely.

“I thought I saw a light on in here,” she purred in her distinctive drawl. She plopped down onto another of the chairs situated around the table, her chin in her hand as she fixed Harriet with her light-blue eyes. “Work, work, work. You put us all to shame, Hattie.”

Harriet swallowed her immediate flash of irritation. Lucinda had been assigned to their parlor at the beginning of the term, and on first meeting her, Harriet had been inclined to like her. The Southern heritage inherent in her languid speech reminded her of her father, who had left South Carolina long before Harriet was born but still bore that distinctive accent when he spoke. Further exposure, however, revealed an overly saccharine, even obsequious bent to the girl’s nature that was grating. She tended to fawn and simper when she was with Harriet in an obvious attempt to court friendship, even to the point of inviting Harriet to come home to South Carolina with her over the Christmas vacation. These silly flirtations aside, one of her more annoying habits was her tendency to reduce the name of every girl she met to some diminutive or other. Thus, Harriet had become Hattie. It was not so much different from the fond Etty that her family often employed when addressing her, but she was not prepared to accept such easy familiarity from this parlor mate, and she had done everything she could to convey disapproval. Lucinda was not, however, a person attuned to subtlety, and short of a full-blown confrontation, there appeared to be no way for Harriet to make her point. Choosing the least resistant path, she let the reference slide and returned to her copying without comment.

Lucinda shrugged and reached for the first of the finished sheets, her eyes widening as she read.

“Oh, Hattie, you speak true. All this emphasis our teachers put on writing essays truly is — how do you say it here?” She looked back at the text. “‘A bitter pill … productive of evils that overbalance the real or supposed good.’ I could not have said it better myself!”

Harriet suppressed a sigh. As she would have expected, the girl had picked out superficial words and missed the underlying meaning altogether. She said, “If you read further, you will see that it is not the emphasis on writing that I see as problematic but the overindulgence in flattery of the writer’s skill. Writing an essay requires people to distill their thoughts and present them in a coherent form, which is essential to the maturation of the writer’s mind. If what is presented is not well-written, however, encouraging the writer only fosters mediocrity. That is the point I am trying to make.”

Lucinda was watching her with a tiny frown. “Well, I declare, that is so … interesting.” She pushed back and stood. “Well, I shall leave you to your writing and get on with my toilette.”

Something for which Lucinda seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time and thought, Harriet reflected. The college demanded a high standard of personal hygiene and neatness of appearance, but Lucinda carried this injunction to such an extreme that it bordered on vanity, which was incongruous with her rather ordinary physical attributes. She was just over five feet in height with hair the color of sand, blotchy skin, a round face with a pouty mouth, a sharp little nose, and smallish eyes framed by lashes so light they were barely visible. In short, hardly an advertisement for Southern beauty.

As Lucinda started for her room, their final parlor mate, Annabel Chadwick, opened her door and stepped out. She was tall and lithe with a body more suited to athletics than her chosen field of music. Her brown hair tumbled about her shoulders untamed by a nighttime braid, and she wore her usual sunny smile.

“Good morning, ladies. May I join your little tete-a-tete, or is it private?”

“Do come in, Annie,” Lucinda said with a grimace. “Perhaps you can make out what our dear Hattie is on about with her fancy ideas. I surely cannot. My time is better spent on preparing for the day.”

She gave a little wave of her fingers and closed herself in her room.

Annabel grinned, shaking her head. “So easily befuddled, our little Lucinda. I will not even ask what that was about.”

Harriet returned her smile. “Suffice it to say her academic discernment leaves something to be desired.”

“One wonders sometimes how she managed to pass the entrance exams.” A glance at the cluttered table. “I see you are hard at work again.”

“As it happens, I am almost finished. I woke up early this morning for some reason and decided I had time before breakfast to get it done.”

“Hm-m. Then I shan’t disturb you further.” She disappeared back into her room.

Harriet dipped her pen into the ink bottle and continued writing. When the essay’s last paragraph was finished, she gathered up both draft and finished product, picked up her lamp, and returned to her own room. Their schedule allowed for an hour from the rising bell until they were required to be in their seats at breakfast. Harriet had always thought undue attention to personal appearance was a superfluous waste of time, and she proceeded through the familiar rituals with little thought. She chose a plain dark-blue skirt with the fullness in the back that was required by the day’s fashion and a white blouse to be garnished with a navy neck ribbon. She quickly fitted them over her slender frame. She unbraided the unruly black hair she had inherited from her mother and did her best to brush and tame it into the simple style she preferred: a center part with the bulk pulled back over her ears and pinned into a utilitarian knot high on her head. She used the mirror over her bedroom vanity to tuck away any stray wisps, paying little attention to the high cheek bones, generous mouth, and wide gray-blue eyes that were the one feature she could attribute to her father. Satisfied, she hurried to make her bed and tidy the room, finishing just as the warning breakfast bell sounded.

The three girls left together, turning down their third-floor corridor toward the majestic double staircase that gave access to all four floors of the main college building. Chatting amongst themselves, they greeted their fellow students as they poured from their parlors. When they came to the staircase, they descended to the second floor’s elegant thirty-foot vestibule, turned back past the double columns flanking either side of the stairway, and entered the dining hall.

This was an impressive room ninety-four feet long and forty-five feet wide with a thirteen-foot, column-supported ceiling that could easily seat the four-hundred-some students and faculty. They took their places at their assigned table, and Harriet noticed at once that there was a general unease and whispering that was out of the ordinary. She sent a questioning glance to her tablemate, who whispered,

“Miss Lyman is not here.”

Never in Harriet’s two-plus years at the college had she known the lady principal to be absent from a meal. She said, “I hope she is not ill.”

“Indeed.”

Harriet was settling her napkin in her lap when she felt a soft hand on her shoulder. Miss Wood, the corridor teacher for her floor, leaned down and whispered, “Please come with me, Miss Mitchell. Miss Lyman wishes to see you.”

Harriet could not have been more startled had she been told she was being summoned by the president of the United States himself. The moment she took in the pretty teacher’s somber face, however, surprise quickly turned to anxiety. Heart pounding, she rose and went with her, aware of the sudden hush that had fallen over the dining hall and the astonished faces of her fellow students.

They climbed to the third floor, passed the library, and entered the lady principal’s office. Miss Hannah W. Lyman was seated behind her large desk, impeccable in appearance as always. She was a tall slender woman whose costume never varied: black silk in the evening or some softer color such as the lavender she now wore in the morning, and a dainty black lace cap with streamers that floated over a white fleecy shawl. As was the fashion for women of her age, her white hair was worn with long curls cascading down either side of her pale face.

Like Miss Wood’s, her face wore lines of great sorrow. She rose and came around her desk, both hands reaching out. She clasped Harriet’s hands, saying, “Come and sit, child. I have something I must tell you.”

He nodded, opened the carriage door, and handed her up into it.

Chapter Two

Harriet’s entire being quivered with dread. She allowed herself to be led to two chairs that flanked a lamp table beneath the front window, her body functioning like a machine disconnected from her soul. She was not even aware that Miss Wood had left the room and closed the door. Miss Lyman eased her into one of the chairs and took the other for herself.

“A telegram arrived at the college a short time ago,” the lady principal began. “It appears that a great tragedy took place at your home in Brooklyn last night. An intruder broke in and attacked your parents. Your father was killed, and your mother badly injured. There were no details about her condition other than that she still lived as of the telegram’s sending.”

She paused to allow the words to penetrate Harriet’s numb mind.

When Harriet was able to speak, she stammered, “No … no ...” Frowning and shaking her head slowly from side to side, “… that cannot be right.”

Tears gathered in the corners of the old principal’s eyes. “Oh, my dear girl, I fear that it is. The telegram came directly from the local police.”

She rose and pulled Harriet up into her embrace. Harriet lay limp against her bony shoulder until the crushing weight of reality caused her knees to buckle. She sank to the floor and began rocking back and forth, a moan rising from the depths of her very soul. Nimbler than anyone who knew Mrs. Lyman would ever have guessed, the old lady knelt and once again clasped Harriet in her embrace.

How long they remained thus entwined was impossible for Harriet to judge, but eventually her tortured mind allowed her the release of tears. When the first wave had passed, she responded to the principal’s urging and rose to sit once again in the chair. She took the handkerchief the lady offered, wiped her face and blew her nose, and clutched it so hard her fingernails dug into the palm of her hand.

“What about my brothers and sister?” she whispered, needing to know but dreading what might come.

“There is no mention of anyone else. I believe you can be reassured that they are well.” Then in a more businesslike tone, “Arrangements are currently being made for you to return home on the afternoon train. Miss Wood will assist you in packing, and Thomas will come at fifteen minutes before noon to collect your baggage. You, of course, are relieved of your morning schedule. You may spend the time in the chapel, if you so choose. Before you go, however, I would like to offer a prayer for you and your family. You may not be able to see how just now, but our Lord will help you through this.”

Harriet nodded and bowed her head. She heard the principal speaking, but the words did not penetrate her stunned mind. When the prayer was finished, she stood for a moment with no idea what she should do. Then she remembered the principal’s suggestion that she go to the chapel, which lay opposite the library and directly above the dining hall. She made her way there and took a seat at the back.

She knew she was supposed to pray, but she was unable to form the words. She had been raised in the church, her mother the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and an unabashed believer in Christian doctrine. Harriet had accepted it all as a matter of course, never having had her safe, ordered world thrown into disarray as it now apparently had been, and she felt ill prepared to face it. The age-old questions hovered at the outer reaches of her mind. Why had this happened? How could a loving God have allowed it? Was He even there? She made no attempt to answer them, sitting instead in a void of thought or feeling, the minutes ticking away unnoticed.

Eventually she became aware that someone was hovering over her shoulder. She heard, “It is nearly time for you to go.”

Harriet recognized Miss Wood’s soft voice. She looked up, nodded, and went with the teacher down the hall to her parlor. Both parlor mates were waiting inside. Lucinda rushed forward and crushed her in an embrace, crying,

“Oh, Hattie, darling! You poor, poor dear. Annie and I are so devastated for you! Everyone is.”

There was a suffocating, almost predatory feel to the girl’s tightly locked arms, and Harriett squirmed to free herself. Annabel was watching with deep concern overlaid by embarrassment. Harriet flashed a look of gratitude, little more than a grimace, and continued into her bedroom, where she saw that her trunk had already been brought from storage and packed with some of her belongings.

“I believe I have included everything you will need in the short-term,” said Miss Wood, who had followed her into the room. “Anything left behind will be secured and sent on if you are unable to return for a time. Miss Chadwick tells me you intended to submit this …” She held up the completed pages of Harriet’s essay. “… at the Miscellany editors’ meeting this afternoon. I shall take care of it for you.”

What had taken such precedence in Harriet’s mind only hours before now seemed inconsequential in the extreme. She nodded with a vague wave of her hand and a whispered, “Thank you.”

There was a knock at the outer door, and Annabelle opened it to Thomas, the porter who had come to carry the trunk down to the waiting carriage. His somber features confirmed that he, too, knew of her calamity. He bowed, not meeting her eyes, and heaved the trunk to his shoulder before carrying it out. Miss Wood handed Harriet her handbag and gray chesterfield jacket with its small black velvet collar followed by her matching bonnet and muff, sure necessities on such a raw gray day. Together they walked out into the corridor and down the great staircase to the ground level.

Outside, the building seemed as if it were trying to embrace her. The twin curving staircases that gave access to the second story receiving vestibule hovered close on either side. Farther down on each end of the substantial red-brick façade, a transverse wing stretched its protective arm forward. The familiar scene brought Harriet no comfort.

A carriage was waiting on the circular drive ahead. Miss Wood walked her there and held her in a quick embrace before helping her up into the interior. The driver urged the horse forward, and they turned down the long central avenue leading to the main road that would take them to the town of Poughkeepsie and its railroad station two miles distant. The grounds passing on either side were winter drab, the only splashes of color being the evergreens that lined the flanking gravel pathways. They passed beneath the carriageway that bisected the porter’s lodge and turned toward town, the waters of Mill Cove Lake appearing on their right. The sight sent a stab of pain into Harriet’s heart, reminding her of the many happy hours of summer rowing and winter ice skating she had experienced there. Now the lake lay dark and flat and still, a specter that spoke only of death. A sob bubbled up into her throat. She buried her face in the damp handkerchief she still held in her hand and wept.

∞∞∞

The train puffed and shrieked its way into Grand Central Depot’s train shed fifteen minutes late at three-thirty that afternoon. As the miles clicked by, the reality of Harriet’s situation had hit her like a teetering wall that had finally given way to gravity, nearly crushing her beneath its weight. Memories bombarded her so fast that the next was coming before she had even acknowledged the current one. Her father’s twinkling gray eyes, so like her own, and lopsided grin that always seemed to presage the telling of an amusing story. His boisterous laugh. His frequent tender expressions of familial love. The feel of his arms around her, the softness of his beard where she kissed his cheek, the lingering aroma of pipe tobacco that clung to his clothes. How could all of that have been extinguished in a moment of pure evil?

Magnifying Harriet’s unspeakable grief was her visceral fear for her mother, whose graceful, gentle presence had been a defining truth of her life. Having no news except that she was still living, Harriet could only imagine the worst. Even if she were to live, the loss of her beloved husband would surely change the very essence of who she was. Harriet had observed the parents of her friends through the years and had never seen even a hint of the bond that so clearly united her own parents. Their marriage could only be described as a remarkable friendship in addition to an enduring passion that lacked any hierarchical element. They had existed as each truly being the other’s second half, and Harriet had determined from her earliest memory that she would never settle for anything less for herself — a goal she had always assumed would elude her given her life’s ambition to make her own way in the world as a journalist and writer. Few men were interested in a woman of independent stature and means, and she was resolved even at the age of nearly twenty to remain alone barring some miracle from a God Who might not even approve of her plans.

Now she rose with the other passengers and joined the queue to disembark. Miss Lyman had told her she would telegraph ahead with news of her arrival, but she had no idea whether the telegram had arrived in time for someone to meet her. She was already making mental plans to catch the horsecar to the ferry terminal when she saw Lucas’s nearly bald black head towering over the others waiting for the new arrivals.

He pushed through to her, and she indulged her emotional turmoil by collapsing into his strong embrace. He was a tall, reedy man who had been a member of the Mitchell household for as long as she could remember, more an extension of the family than an employee. He looked down at her through tear-stained, bloodshot eyes that expressed his sorrow more than any words could have done. He cradled her against him with one arm and led her through the crowd, the steam and smoke that billowed all around nearly suffocating them both.

The mammoth car house through which they walked had become one of the most popular tourist attractions in the entire nation since its construction two years before. Home to twelve tracks servicing three separate railroads, its arched glass-and-wrought-iron ceiling soared more than a hundred feet above their heads. They followed the raised platform along the train to the steam-belching engine then crossed the remaining tracks, which were populated with their own arriving or departing trains. The depot’s outer walls were anchored by three towers, each one housing the waiting, baggage, and ticketing facilities for one of the city’s major railroads.

They made their way to the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad’s tower to collect Harriet’s trunk from the baggage claim. When Lucas had it hoisted across his narrow but sturdy shoulders, they went outside to the Mitchell family carriage, which was parked in a line of similar vehicles on the far side of several sets of tracks that led into the station. After Lucas had secured the trunk and come around to where Harriet waited beside the carriage, she said,

“I cannot bear to wait another minute before you tell me what happened. My mother …?”

He bowed his head. In a voice raw with anguish, “She’s hurt bad, miss. The doctor don’t say much, but all can see he ain’t very hopeful.”

“Jeremy, Jacob and Mary?”

“Oh, them’re just fine, miss. At least ….”

“In their bodies, you mean.”

He nodded. “But they’re having a terrible time with what happened. As to that, miss, he were a big bruiser. Broke in through one of the kitchen windows. Best we can tell, your pa heard him and met him at the top of the stairs with his pistol. He took a shot, miss, but it was dark, and it only grazed him enough to draw blood. Afore your pa could fire again, the scoundrel stabbed him with a great huge knife and kilt him. He weren’t satisfied with that, though. Kept on to the bedroom and started in on your ma. But little Miss Mary woke up somehow and seen it all. Her screaming must of scared him, and he ran. Meanwhile, me and Paula heard the commotion and came quick as could be. We came in the back just as he was running for the front door. I had the rifle, miss, and I shot at him, but the bullet went wide.” He shook his head, tears streaming down his chocolate cheeks. “I am so sorry, miss. I mighta saved ’em, but I was too late.”

She put a hand on either side of his damp face. “Dearest Lucas, you must not torture yourself so. You did all you could do, and the rest was in God’s hands.”

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